Dementia Flashcards
What is dementia?
Cognitive or behavioural impairment involving a minimum of two of the following:
- Memory,
- Executive function,
- Language,
- Visuospatial
What are the symptoms of impaired memory?
Repetitive questions/conversations, misplacing personal belongings, forgetting events or appointments.
What are symptoms of impaired executive function?
Impaired reasoning, handling of complex tasks or poor judgement. Eg, poor-decision making
What are the symptoms of impaired visuospatial abilities?
Inability to recognise faces, or objects. Inability to operate simple tasks or orientate clothing to body
What are symptoms of impaired language function?
- Difficulty thinking of common words while speaking,
- Hesitations in speech, spelling and writing errors
What are the cognitive assessment tools?
- Folstein MMSE
- Addenbrookes cognitive assessment
What are some different language disorders?
Semantic dementia - Poor confrontation naming
Alzheimer’s Dementia - Impaired signle word retrieval
Describe features of Frontotemporal dementia
- Atrophy of frontal and temporal lobes.
- Presents at a younger age and exhibit personality change and frequently become disinhibited.
- May be caused by Pick’s disease where there is accumulation of TAU
Describe features of vascular dementia
- Caused by impaired blood flow to areas of the brain resulting in progressive infarcts.
- Clinical diagnosis with some imagine. Treatment is treating underlying vascular risk factors
What are the clinical features of Alzheimer’s Disease and the cause
- Amnesia (recent memories lost first)
- Aphasia,
- Agnosia ,
- Apraxia (inability to carry out skilled tasks despite normal motor function)
- Caused by accumulation of amyloid plaques and tau protein tangles.
What is pseudo-dementia?
Cognitive deficits in older patients with dementia.
Describe the features of dementia with Lewy bodies
- Caused by alpha synuclein inclusion bodies (lewy bodies).
- Core features are fluctuating cognition, parkinsonism and visual hallucinations.
